Following the horrific attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, there has been a fierce debate about whether containing the Islamic State is enough. As a contribution to this debate, a recent New York Times article stated flatly that Islamic State leaders have been “patently clear” that they “want the United States and its allies to be dragged into a ground war.” The implication is that the allies should therefore avoid a ground war.
I do not advocate a large-scale invasion led by Western powers for reasons I’ve written about elsewhere. And I certainly don’t want the United States to play into its enemies’ plans. But is this really the Islamic State’s plan?
The article observes that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of the Islamic State’s predecessor al-Qaeda in Iraq described the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 as “blessed” because it would create the chaos he needed to pursue his own state-building project there. But he was rejoicing because the United States was going to destroy the hated Baathist state, not a state created by jihadists. I doubt he would be enthusiastic if the United States and its allies destroy the state his successors built in Syria and Iraq.
The Islamic State’s own strategic literature, for example The Management of Savagery, offers two conflicting reasons for striking the West. One is to force Western countries to go all in so their resources will be drained. The other is to persuade them to stay out.
The New York Times article argues that the Islamic State would view the large-scale invasion of its state as a fulfillment of prophecy and use it to recruit. That’s certainly possible — the Islamic State takes prophecy seriously and uses it to draw new adherents around the world, as I document in my book.
But here too there is reason to pause. The same prophecies also say that the Muslim army will make a truce with the “Romans” — the West in jihadist interpretation. In fact, the Islamic State itself has acknowledged in its propaganda that this is also a possible outcome of the current conflict (see issue #8 of its Dabiq magazine).
As we contemplate a change of course in the fight against the Islamic State as a result of its recent escalation against the West, it is certainly worth thinking about what the Islamic State hopes to achieve. But our debate should be informed by accurate information about the group’s own internal deliberations, which we do not have (at least that is available to people without security clearances), and its past behavior, which we know a great deal about. Trying to divine the Islamic State’s intentions based on prophecy, false analogy, and selective reading of its strategic literature will only confuse rather than clarify our debate.
William McCants is the director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State.
Ana 
Kurt NY 
I am with you on not coupling the dictation of U.S. foreign policy with an I.S. religious agenda, yet the former on its own is a fascinating beast to contend with. As an aside, how do you responsibly weigh the religious component against the threadwork of a broken, apathetic world? When listening to your talk on “Chicago Ideas” or even reading the popular Atlantic article from March, the religious component is the one that terrifies me. As a Christian, the reverence to a God and His promise is a severe one. All religions are in this uncertain waiting period. The nonreligious default to asking how if there is a god, why does he allow bad things to happen; a religious person believes in the first fracture. We question how we don’t get what we do deserve. Even in the U.S., it makes me uneasy every time I read about a fellow believer acting out rashly against a social policy and demarcating it as the mark of the end— it makes me uneasy because there exists a dangerous misunderstanding of the way we live now & the promised one; presently, there is no foundation for religious entitlement, and the grounds for a Christian nation have been crumbling for generations. Why the parallel? Because when I converse on the matter of I.S. with my nonreligious friends, the acts/agenda are described as senseless. With my religious friends, there is a quiet. You take a manipulated love for god, and propel it forward– it has a foundation. In a world of questions, you create an answer. Thankfully, the works of man are inherently flawed—and having it on good authority—a vanity. Anyhow, I appreciate the article & saintly humoring the ignorant, and look forward to the book.
“…..two conflicting reasons for striking the West. One is to force Western countries to go all in so their resources will be drained. The other is to persuade them to stay out.”
“…Trying to divine the Islamic State’s intensions based on prophecy, false analogy, and selective reading of its strategic literature will only confuse rather than clarify our debate.”
ahh.. balance….sometimes its nice to go back to the old days of reporting!
Intervention becomes a quagmire should we become enmeshed in a lengthy guerrilla suppression campaign in which we try to produce stability and absolute destruction of opposition. It would not be so should we view intervention in Iraq and Syria in the limited sense of using our overwhelming conventional force to destroy ISIS’ conventional forces currently holding territory. Once we grind up such forces, local forces would be better able to maintain the situation. Our goal should not be absolute destruction as in destruction of ISIS’ ability to hold and exploit territory.
And if local forces are either not available or unable to maintain order, our interest is not that stability or security exists but that ISIS’ capabilities cannot export that disorder elsewhere. Worst case, view it as a punitive expedition – attack us and we devastate everything you’ve got, then withdraw. Do it again and we do it again. Rinse and repeat as necessary.